Trip Reports Archives – Page 7 of 26

Porto Highlights

April 26th, 2022admin0 Comments

Porto was the first stop on our Portuguese adventure. The second largest city in Portugal, Porto is filled with architectural gems, historic landmarks, and a bustling riverfront. We spent 3 nights in Porto and explored the city on foot, wandering the cobblestone streets and climbing the hills from the banks of the Duoro River. Below are some of the highlights of our 1.5 days exploring the city on our own. Estação de São Bento Our first introduction to Porto was the São Bento train station, and what an introduction it was. Stepping off the train and onto the platform, you …

Lisbon Lost Luggage Saga

April 24th, 2022admin0 Comments

I belong to a Travel Portugal group on FaceBook and before our trip I had been reading nightmare stories about the wait to get through passport control in the Lisbon Airport. Tales of 3.5 hour waits on line were common and had us all nervous when we got off the plane. Little did I know that we would face a different airport obstacle… The line for passport control was fairly long but it was moving along quickly. I can’t even remember why but for some reason I logged into the American Airlines app while we were waiting on line and …

Portugal Travel Requirements

April 23rd, 2022admin0 Comments

*** The information below was accurate as of our trip from April 8-18, 2022. For the most up-to-date travel requirements, please check the US Embassy’s website. In the age of Covid-19, international travel is anything but simple. Every country has different rules and requirements, and they are constantly changing. When I first started researching our Portugal trip, proof of vaccination or a negative test within 48 hours was required to eat inside restaurants and to stay in hotels. While our entire family is vaccinated, this requirement was still tricky because Portugal does not recognize US vaccination cards, which means …

Keystone

February 26th, 2022admin0 Comments

I grew up going skiing in Vermont every February and was lucky enough to go skiing in Colorado and Utah a few times in my young adulthood. Living in the south, our skiing options are nowhere near as impressive. We’ve taken the kids to various ski resorts in North Carolina and West Virginia but felt like they were ready for the next step. We started looking at options out west for a President’s Day weekend trip and decided on Keystone, CO. Keystone boasts three mountain peaks with a combined 130 trails. Located an hour and a half from Denver at …

Sugar Mountain

January 9th, 2022admin0 Comments

North Carolina has three main ski resorts: Appalachian Ski Mountain, Beech Mountain, and Sugar Mountain. Having visited both App and Beech in 2021, we were ready to check Sugar Mountain off our list in 2022. We went to Sugar Mountain as a day trip in early January, looking for a warm-up before our big trip to Keystone, CO in February. My husband and I own ski gear now but we still had to rent for the kids. We rented their equipment at an Alpine Ski Center at the base of the mountain and made it to the mountain a little …

Monticello

December 31st, 2021admin0 Comments

For a variety of reasons, we haven’t flown from NC to NJ to visit family since the pandemic started. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t visited! It just means that we’ve driven. A lot. We normally like to break up the drive but are starting to run out of midway points of interest. Charlottesville was one of the last remaining places on our idea list of stops so we headed there for an overnight on our drive back to NC after Christmas. We decided to leave NJ early enough to visit Monticello that afternoon. The historic site has several ticket …

Carowinds WinterFest

December 23rd, 2021admin0 Comments

Up until a few years ago, Carowinds shut down for the season after SCarowinds ended on Halloween. But in 2017, the theme park introduced a new holiday event, WinterFest. Open on weekends and select evenings between Thanksgiving and New Years, WinterFest offers holiday decorations, entertainment, activities, rides, and more. When my kids were younger, the SCarowinds decorations terrified them, even during the day. But even as I was ushering them quickly through the scary sections to get to the Peanuts’ Great Pumpkin Fest, I recognized that Carowinds did an amazing (albeit scary) job with their decorations. I was excited to …

Immersive Van Gogh

August 30th, 2021admin0 Comments

Earlier in the summer, my FaceBook feed started filling up with people posing next to larger than life metal sunflowers and gigantic paint cans and brushes. Everyone I knew seemed to be visiting the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit, a traveling show that has visited such cities as Paris, Chicago and Los Angeles. In Charlotte, it is located in trendy Camp North End. Running through early 2022, ticket prices vary based on demand and start at $39.99 for adults ($24.99 for kids), although the “cheap” tickets were very hard to come by and typically only available in the middle of the …

Dupont State Park

August 25th, 2021admin0 Comments

We have done quite a bit of hiking around North Carolina and hands down my favorite place to go is Dupont State Park. I don’t know of anywhere else in the state that you can do a 3 mile hike and see 3 different waterfalls. So when my sister and her family decided to stop in Asheville on the way back to NJ from Hilton Head, I knew exactly the hike to take them on. I have done this hike twice before and both times parked at High Falls parking area and did the loop from there that included High …

Lawton Stables

August 22nd, 2021admin0 Comments

My youngest loves all things related to animals and really enjoyed his first horseback riding experience at Cedar Creek Stables in Lake Lure, NC. Last summer he had really wanted to ride horses while we were on our annual trip to Hilton Head, but the stables were closed due to the pandemic. So we were thrilled to find that Lawton Stables was open again this summer. We didn’t have any other takers on this adventure among the siblings and cousins so we made it a mom-son outing. At $75 per person, it was a little pricey so I was happy …